There’s a line from an old movie, Wheeler Dealers: “You don’t go wheeling and dealing for the money, you do it for fun. Money’s just a way of keeping… - Sam Zell

There’s a line from an old movie, Wheeler Dealers: “You don’t go wheeling and dealing for the money, you do it for fun. Money’s just a way of keeping score.

We believed the real money in real estate came from borrowing long-term, fixed-rate debt in an inflationary scenario that ultimately depreciated the value of the loan and increased the position of the borrower.

In very short order, we were able to persuade Blackstone to raise its bid to $48.50 a share for a total of $20 billion, plus $16 billion in debt, or $36 billion total. I insisted that our agreement include an unusually small breakup fee so other potential bidders wouldn’t be discouraged. The typical breakup fee is up to 3 percent of the selling price, but I set ours at $200 million — around 1 percent of the offer’s equity value. Obviously, this didn’t sit well with Blackstone, but it was not negotiable.

Zeckendorf’s autobiography was packed with colorful stories, but what fascinated me most was his strategy. Zeckendorf viewed assets as a sum of parts, so he could increase the value of the whole. Various parts were more valuable to different buyers, so Zeckendorf could maximize the value of his holding overall, in effect making 1 + 1 = 3. For example, One Park Avenue in Manhattan, which the marketplace had valued at $10 million, was ultimately worth $15 million in Zeckendorf’s hands. He calculated everything separately — the building’s title, the land, the leases, the individual mortgages. I thought this was brilliant. I adopted the approach both inside and, later, outside of the real estate industry.